Cosimo specialized in painting scenes
from classical mythology, such as The
Death of Procris. His vivid imagination in-
spired the creation of original figures, half
human and half animal, set in a naturalis-
tic landscape and serving as symbolic rep-
resentations of ideas and emotions. In-
spired by the ancient Roman writer
Vitruvius, Cosimo painted imaginary
scenes from a time when the human race
led a simpler existence; these works in-
cludeHunting Scene, Return from the Hunt,
Discovery of Honey, andDiscovery of Wine.
Such works, which were painted outside
the tradition of religious painting, came
under official disapproval during the reign
of the fanatic Dominican monk Girolamo
Savonarola in Florence. Cosimo reacted by
taking up Christian subjects, includingThe
Immaculate ConceptionandThe Holy Fam-
ily. Cosimo also was well known in Flo-
rence as a portrait painter, with his most
famous work in this vein being thePor-
trait of Simionetta Vespucci, a picture of
the mistress of Giuliano de’ Medici. He
also trained many of the best Florentine
artists of his time, including Andrea del
Sartro.
SEEALSO: Florence; Sartro, Andrea del;
Savonarola, Girolamo
piracy ..............................................
Piracy on the open seas dates back millen-
nia, and was a common plague of mer-
chant shipping in ancient Greece and
Rome. Through the Middle Ages, Mediter-
ranean pirates commonly hijacked cargoes
as well as individuals, selling them into
slavery or holding them for ransom. With
small or nonexistent navies, weak central
governments could do very little to sup-
press piracy. In the sixteenth century, with
the rise of the Ottoman Empire, piracy in
the Mediterranean posed even greater dan-
gers. These corsairs, or Barbary Coast pi-
rates, had been operating for centuries us-
ing fast, shallow-drafted ships that could
outrun any large warship, and take shelter
in bays or rivers where military ships could
not go. Piracy was an important industry
in Tunis, Algiers, and other Barbary Coast
cities, where syndicates of wealthy inves-
tors sponsored voyages and divided the
profits as well as hostage ransoms. The
corsairs posed a constant threat to coastal
towns in Sicily, Spain, and the southern
coasts of Italy, and even raided in the At-
lantic Ocean as far north as Iceland. Their
piracy was often supported by ruling sul-
tans, who protected the corsairs in port
and built holding cells for hostages, who
at one point numbered tens of thousands
in the city of Algiers.
At the same time, piracy was spreading
to the Caribbean and the Atlantic as new
colonies were founded in the Americas,
and treasure fleets transporting gold to
Europe presented tempting targets. As na-
tions competed for colonies and resources,
the European monarchies began sponsor-
ing pirates called privateers to undertake
raids against the ships of their rivals. One
of the most successful was Sir Francis
Drake, commissioned a privateer by Queen
Elizabeth I of England. Drake raided Span-
ish ports in the Caribbean and California,
and fought in the queen’s service during
the campaign of the Spanish Armada in
1588.
The buccaneers, as they were also
known after the French cooking grill
known as aboucan, were hired by the gov-
ernments of England, the Netherlands, and
France for the purpose of harassing Span-
ish shipping to and from Spain’s American
colonies. The buccaneers formed a power-
ful military faction in the Caribbean re-
gion, and established protected bases inpiracy